National Socialism has simplified the thinking of the German people and led it back to its original primitive formulas.  It has presented the complicated processes of political and economic life in their simplest terms.  This was done with the well-considered intention of leading the broad masses of the people once again to take part in political life.  In order to find understanding among the masses, we consciously practiced a popular [volksgebundene] propaganda.  We have taken complexes of facts which were formerly accessible only to a few specialists and experts, carried them to the streets, and hammered them into the brain of the little man.  All things were presented so simply that even the most primitive mind could grasp them.  We refused to work with unclear or insubstantial concepts but we gave all things a clearly defined sense.  Here lay the secret of our success.[112]

The character and quality of Nazi propaganda was fully presaged in Mein Kampf.  Here Hitler paid a striking tribute to the power of lies, commenting on—­

the very correct principle that the size of the lie always involves a certain factor of credibility, since the great mass of a people will be more spoiled in the innermost depths of its heart, rather than consciously and deliberately bad.  Consequently, in view of the primitive simplicity of its mind it is more readily captivated by a big lie than by a small one, since it itself often uses small lies but would be, nevertheless, too ashamed to make use of big lies.  Such an untruth will not even occur to it, and it will not even believe that others are capable of the enormous insolence of the most vile distortions.  Why, even when enlightened, it will still vacillate and be in doubt about the matter and will nevertheless accept as true at least some cause or other.  Consequently, even from the most impudent lie something will always stick ...[113]

A number of other passages display Hitler’s low opinion of the intellectual capacities and critical faculties of the masses: 

All propaganda has to appeal to the people and its intellectual level has to be set in accordance with the receptive capacities of the most-limited persons among those to whom it intends to address itself.  The larger the mass of men to be reached, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be set.[114]

The receptive capacity of the great masses is very restricted, its understanding small.  On the other hand, however, its forgetfulness is great.  On account of these facts all effective propaganda must restrict itself to very few points and impress these by slogans, until even the last person is able to bring to mind what is meant by such a word.[115]

The task of propaganda is, for instance, not to evaluate diverse rights but to emphasize exclusively the single right of that which it is representing.  It does not have to investigate